Monday June 22, 2009
Monday June 22, 2009
Developing for Google App Engine in NetBeans IDE
One of the many people I met at JavaOne was NetBeans Platform developer Mark Claassen. (I'd still like to interview him about his NetBeans Platform experiences, just like I did with Chad Dorkin, as evidenced in the interview published yesterday entitled "Semiconductor Validation Engineering on the NetBeans Platform".)
Mark was concerned that NetBeans IDE seemed to be missing a number of very crucial plugins or that those plugins had not been adequately advertized. Here's my attempt to rectify that situation for one specific plugin, the one for developing/deploying Java applications for the Google App Engine:
http://plugins.netbeans.org/PluginPortal/faces/PluginDetailPage.jsp?pluginid=18493
I also created an issue on the Google App Engine site for missing documentation relating to this NetBeans plugin:
http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=1734
Feel free to add your support for this issue above.
Now a quick overview of what the plugin entails. First, of course, you need to download, unzip, and then install the NBM files that the plugin provides:
Next, you'll find you have the complete sample that is outlined on the Google App Engine site, i.e.. a Guest Book:
Also, the Google App Engine configuration file has a special icon, file support, and a visual editor:
The Services window shows a node for the running Google App Engine, which I was able to register after downloading the Java bundle for the Google App Engine:
Whenever you create a new web application, you can specify that it should be deployed to the Google App Engine, which causes the abovementioned Google App Engine configuration file to be created for you when Finish is clicked in this wizard:
And, once your application is ready to be deployed, you can right-click it and then upload it to the Google App Engine from inside the IDE:
That's a pretty solid plugin, providing exactly the kind of Google App Engine support that I'd expect NetBeans IDE to have. The only questions are when this will be mentioned on the Google App Engine site and when the plugin will be part of a standard NetBeans IDE release.
Go here to look at the sources, join the developer community around this project, or contribute source code yourself:
http://kenai.com/projects/nbappengine
Jun 22 2009, 02:04:14 AM PDT Permalink
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